Intelligence & Intuition: A Powerful Combination
In our work—whether developing multi-market public affairs strategies, facilitating leadership alignment, or steering internal change—we’ve seen the most impactful outcomes emerge from the interplay of intelligence and intuition:
For clearer insight: The best business data can explain what's happening; a sixth sense for broader forces in a market or trends among a target group illuminates why—and why now.
For confident foresight: Scenario and solution planning can map possible ways forward; instincts honed across relevant political, economic, and cultural contexts illuminates the paths most likely to succeed.
By tapping both intelligence and intuition, we enable leaders and teams to embrace complexity, anticipate change, recognize opportunities, and pursue new paths to impact.
Intelligence and intuition have clear and complementary roles across the full range of decisions and actions that leaders must take:
Policy: Data can track regulatory sentiment and legislative risk; experience anticipates which proposals will quietly fade and which will ignite opposition.
People: Customer and employee surveys reveal trends; empathic listening uncovers the unspoken motivations and fears behind them.
Partnerships: Market analysis and stakeholder mapping highlights potential synergies; lived experience discerns which collaborations will hold under pressure.
Perception: Sentiment tracking quantifies brand reputation; cultural fluency reveals the narratives—spoken and unspoken—that shape it.
OUR APPROACH
Intelligence + Intuition
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Advice + Action
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Clarity + Confidence
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Alignment + Impact
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Intelligence + Intuition · Advice + Action · Clarity + Confidence · Alignment + Impact ·
Leadership in the Age of AI
There's tremendous potential to be harnessed and leveraged from evolving AI tools. Leaders and their teams should continue to embrace and explore these possibilities. At the same time, we should not delude ourselves about the limitations, or neglect other sources of insight and foresight that have shaped decision-making for centuries.
For all of its strengths in research and reasoning, AI cannot replace the emotional, experiential, and intuitive imperatives of leadership. If anything, improvements in AI are exposing the distinct value that the best leaders contribute to their organizations and to society. Likewise, the expectations for leaders and their advisors are shifting and rising.
As we venture further into the age of AI, the interplay of intelligence and intuition will become even more evident—and ability to access and apply both will enable some leaders and organizations to achieve more than their peers.
As a first order, leaders and their advisors must demonstrate wisdom about when and how to use AI tools. The answer to these questions will vary across contexts. They will also evolve with the technology. As general principles, however, leaders can model curiosity as a value, create psychological safety to question both long-held and novel assumptions, and coach their teams towards inquiries that generate reliable output from both human and AI analyses.
Then, more than ever, leaders and their advisors must add the unique wisdom of our instincts, contextual awareness, emotional intelligence, and value judgment to re-interpret the output, to make the tough decisions with confidence, and to communicate those decisions with clarity. In short, leaders ensure that the essential human-ness of an organization remains at the center of both its strategy and operations.
Whether navigating complex policy environments, shaping a workplace culture, forging partnerships, or managing stakeholders and perception, the organizational leaders who will succeed are those who combine intelligence and intuition, who balance the value of AI technology with uniquely human capabilities, and who do so consistently.